Plus, now that there are several live TV streaming services, that may be the best way to handle all the viewing sans cable. Hulu with live TV is $479.88 per year—add HBO and Showtime to it and the price jumps to $719.76. If you add all the remaining streaming services (Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube Red, CBS, and Starz) that's $1,214.38—still cheaper than the average pay TV cable service.
Perhaps the biggest selling point for DIRECTV NOW is that you get a DIRECTV experience without the contract or setup fees. There’s no need to install a satellite dish, so you don’t have to pay for that, and though the streaming service isn’t quite as robust as its satellite counterpart, you don’t have to sign a contract. It really makes it easier to stomach some of the higher-priced packages from DIRECTV NOW because, guess what? You can cancel anytime.

I don’t follow your second point, what seems unethical – and difficult? If you mean Playon – I’m not sure why it would be unethical. You still have to watch all the ads that Hulu/other services put in the content, as watching TV through playon is basically the same as watching it through your web browser. So you’re not really stealing content or anything like that. Just watching it with Playon instead of IE or Firefox.

Whether you’re a good candidate for cutting the cord depends in large part on what and when you watch. Before considering cancelling your cable subscription, first spend some time evaluating your viewing habits. How often do you actually sit down and watch television? When you do, what are you actually watching? Live sports? Prime-time reality television? The Cooking Channel? Do you like being able to channel surf or do you usually only turn on your TV to watch Game of Thrones?
When talking to people who are interested in cutting the cord, the issue that continually crops up is how to find affordable internet access. Many ask how to obtain internet access without a cable TV bundle. While market competition between internet service providers in the U.S. is extremely low, you can still find deals on high-speed internet only plans without a TV bundle.
Netflix.com: Slightly more, but the added convenience of keeping the movies and TV shows as long as you want, and being able to stream a selection of movies and TV shows over the computer, or networked media device. Netflix is getting better all the time, now with great original series like House of Cards. Find all plans and how to maximize your return on this post: How Much Netflix Costs.
That six-or-nine bucks a month gets you access to some of the most popular shows on TV the day after airing, including The Big Bang Theory, Mom, Elementary, Survivor, Amazing Race, even daytime shows. There are also a few thousand old TV shows streaming here, such as Cheers, all the versions of Star Trek (the rights are owned by the CBS Corporation), Brady Bunch, The Twilight Zone, and Hawaii Five-0. You can insert your own joke here about how the Tiffany Network is for your grandparents, because I already made mine above.
There are two basic ways to stream on your TV: you can use an external streaming device or you can simply use a smart TV. In practice, these two things are really just the same. Either way, a little computer is streaming the content and telling your TV what to put on. Whether you opt for the all-in-one solution (the smart TV) or the plug-and-play one (the external streaming device) is really up to you.
There is NO WAY to get FREE CABLE TV over the air, with an HDTV antenna. It is not possible to get HGTV, The History Channel, AMC, CMT, TVLand, and those other types of channels over an HDTV antenna! I wish these websites and these phony ads would stop fooling people into buying these “magic sticks” and “magic TV” antennas claiming that they will be able to watch CNN, TNT, TBS, The Science Channel, Biography, National Geographic, etc. without paying a cable company. It is NOT TRUE. They can stream whatever with a subscription, but guess what? THEY STILL NEED TO PAY THE CABLE COMPANY FOR INTERNET ACCESS AND THAT COSTS ABOUT $80 A MONTH WHEN YOU CANCEL THE BUNDLES!